Something Green

by Drew Zachary

  Lockhart's gaze slid away and he said nothing.

  Jesse stared at him and then at DB. "Apparently there is."

  "So what's the story, then?" DB grabbed the chair by the dresser and put it in front of the bed, straddling it. "Yanya's a medium and eventually she's going to do something drastic to get rid of you. Well, more drastic." He figured Yanya had to be pretty near that point if she was calling him in.

  Lockhart looked at Jesse and sat up a bit. He was really good at not sinking into the bed, too. "Ghosts can't touch each other. But we can talk, right?" He waited for Jesse to nod. "And sometimes there's living people who can see us and talk to us." He pointed at DB. "But sometimes there's living people who just don't know when to let something go. I waited a long time for some business to end, and now I'm going to take care of what's mine."

  DB exchanged a worried look with Jesse. That sounded ominous. "What're you going to take care of? You're dead. That kind of limits your options a bit, doesn't it?"

  Lockhart snorted. "Right. Do I look like a fool? This secret is mine, and I'm not about to start telling any fool who asks."

  "You realize if you don't tell me, I'm going to start digging. You can't have left too many things lying around undiscovered, what with your home and business being taken apart and probating your estate, or whatever it is they do. No matter what it is you're worried about, it won't affect you much now, anyway, will it?"

  Lockhart snorted at him, the sound disgusting and phlegmy. "You think I'm worried for me? I'm dead. But a man has family, and family is more important than dyin'."

  Jesse looked at DB and pointed out the door. "We'll be back, Mr. Lockhart. Give us a few."

  "I ain't goin' nowhere. It's a nice big bed."

  DB headed out, confused. What the hell had Lockhart been talking about -- family? The only one living there was Yanya. He closed the door behind him. "What?" he demanded when Jesse came through the door into the hallway.

  "He's not going to tell you anything," Jesse said firmly. "He's spent ten years working for something. That's dedication to a cause. We need to find out who his family is, how he died, and what kind of stuff he was fencing; anything like that. I mean, he said family is important, but there's no family here, in this building. That would mean that there's something else going on, too, right? Maybe?" Jesse looked at him, uncertain. "I'll talk to him some more, see what I can pry out of him, but I think maybe Joe could help out here."

  "Yeah, you might be right." DB put a cigarette between his lips. He wouldn't light it until he left Yanya's, but it helped him think. "I'll go see what Yanya can tell me."

  "Okay." Jesse nodded. "I'll see if he'll talk to me, but I don't have a lot of hope about it. Tell Yanya that I'll try to at least get him off her bed while we poke through things and see why he's sticking around. Why he came home instead of keeping with the guy he was haunting."

  "Sounds good. Come back down when you're done -- I'll stay until you do." He headed back downstairs to see where Yanya had gotten to.

  Yanya's mug was full again when he found her, sending up wafts of steam. She was perched on a stool by a long table, bagging up bits of string with black beads strung on them. "Is he going to leave?" she demanded as soon as DB walked into the room.

  "You know it's not that easy. I'll take the case, though. Jesse's up there grilling him, and when he's done I'll start looking into it. Don't worry; we'll get it figured out." He sat on the overstuffed, gaudy as hell couch. "What can you tell me about him?"

  Yanya rolled her eyes and picked up her mug. "Not a lot. He was dead when I bought the place, gone just a couple of months. He died in the basement; a heart attack, I think. Place was full of crap; it took me a week to move it all out and haul it to the junk yard. What he called stock was sold off before I showed up; I got the garbage."

  "And he wasn't haunting the place when you bought it?"

  "Hell, no." Yanya shook her head. "I knew what I was doing when I was shopping for a place. I checked it, I cleansed it, I made sure the whole dang block was as ghost-free as possible. And until now they've only stopped in once in a while or been invited. Having a full time ghost is hard."

  DB snorted. "Tell me about it." And he even wanted his full-time ghost.

  "How's that going, anyway? He seems a lot happier. You finally tell him you love him?"

  "That's none of your business." He glared at Yanya. "And you're paying for my time to deal with your business. So when did Lockhart show up?"

  "Touchy," Yanya muttered, leaning back and smirking. "I know what that means. Mmhmm. He showed up here sometime during the day last Wednesday. I worked all day, had an evening session with some ladies, and when I cleaned up the shop and went to bed, there he was. On my bed. We argued for a few hours, and I came back down here to sleep. Every night since then it's the same thing. I yell, he smiles, and I sleep on the couch." She looked furious, her big hands curling around her coffee cup. "The nerve of him, taking my bed."

  DB could sympathize with Yanya over that. "Have you tried sleeping there anyway? Or done an exorcism of some sort? Even just run a broom handle or something through him -- some ghosts find that kind of thing disconcerting."

  "I walloped him with a pillow." She looked a little embarrassed by that. "I don't want to banish his ass -- that's painful, and it means that the soul gets marked; he wouldn't be able to move on later, if he wanted to, and who am I to condemn a man for stealing my bed?" She sighed. "He won't tell me why he's here, is the thing. I'm used to chatty ghosts, ghosts who want something from me. This guy... he just wants to stay, and I don't think it's because he likes me."

  "No, I think it's got to do with secrets he took to his death. Are you sure about the heart attack in the basement? Could it have been something else, like murder?"

  "I'm not the one to ask about that, but it wouldn't surprise me now. His daughter didn't say anything about it being suspicious, but he's here, right?"

  "He has a daughter?" DB pulled his pad out of his coat pocket. "You don't happen to have her info, do you?"

  Yanya sipped her coffee and frowned. "Ten years is a long time. She was a mouse of a thing, needed a sandwich and a good hairstylist. Her name was Charity. I remember that because, God, the irony. Charity Lockhart. She was in her twenties then, looked almost forty. Not married."

  "Thanks, Yanya." He wrote stuff down, wondering why Lockhart wasn't staying with Charity, if she was who he was trying to protect. "Did you ever dig up the basement? Or find something that would be worth hiding, protecting?"

  "I don't go down there if I can help it." Again, she looked a little embarrassed. "I go down to the section right at the bottom of the stairs -- I keep some stock down there because it's cool and dry -- but I don't go into the main part. It's creepy."

  "Oh? Creepy how?" This could be an important clue to what was holding Lockhart here.

  "Dark. Spiders. You know. Creepy." Her eyes narrowed. "I'm a medium. It's not haunted. The ghost is upstairs. I just don't like the basement. You're welcome to go and poke around if you want."

  "Yeah, I think I will. After all, that's where the ghost who's haunting you died."

  "Enjoy yourself." She played with the fringe of her shawl and looked at her fingernails. "If you find something, let me know."

  He couldn't help teasing her. "I can't believe you're scared of a little dark and spiders."

  "Watch yourself, boy." She stood up and loomed over him. "I know how to make your sex life worse."

  "Honey, I'm doing it with a ghost who's not corporeal the majority of the time. Knock yourself out."

  "You saying you two haven't managed to get busy yet?"

  "I'm saying my lover is dead. We can't get much lower than that. Now, if you don't have anything else useful for me, I'm going to go downstairs and check out your creepy basement."

  "Lord." She rolled her eyes. "Two ghosts upstairs, a pushy PI in my basement, and three women at two o'clock hoping I'll read their palms and find them true love and a fortune. Wha
t did I do to deserve this life?"

  "I don't know, but the crystal ball might have something to do with it." He got up and headed for what he assumed was the door to the basement before Yanya could throw something at him.

  "I don't need a ball to know what's in store for you, you keep this up," he heard her mutter.

  Still chuckling, he turned on the basement lights and headed down the stairs. The first section was all shelves with bits and pieces of overstock for Yanya's store. It was only after he turned the corner that he hit the 'creepy' part. The biggest problem was that the shelving blocked off most of the light, and it looked like no one had been down there in ten years -- everything was covered in dust and cobwebs.

  DB walked into the dark, brushing a cobweb out of his way with a grimace. "Yuck."

  "Yeah, exactly." Jesse popped into view right beside him. "Wow, this is a mess. No wonder he's upstairs."

  "Can you see anything?" DB closed and opened his eyes a few times, trying to get them used to the dark so he could see better.

  "Spiders, shelves, a stack of magazines that you really don't want to cut the string on -- I think there's mold. Uh, more shelving units, but I think they're empty. The floor's not poured concrete, but I don't know what it is. Stones?"

  "Huh. You think we ought to bring a light down here and do a proper clean-out job? He died down here, and I can't shake the feeling there's something important."

  "Yeah, maybe. He wouldn't tell me anything." A tingle lit up the small of DB's back as Jesse touched him. "There's something about the house for sure. Did Yanya keep anything of his? Stock, maybe? If he was fencing, he might have had something down here that people wanted back."

  "She said everything worth anything was sold, and she packed the rest up and sent it to the dump. Down here makes it look like she didn't do that great a job with the packing up." DB made a face and decided to come back with a couple of lights, gloves, a mask, and some big garbage bags. "I'm charging her extra for cleaning down here. Oh, he also had a daughter."

  "For real?" Jesse sounded surprised. "Well done. I didn't get anything out of him other than... well, Yanya works out at night, is pretty buff under the dress, and might possibly have a girlfriend. Lockhart is chatty, but not about himself or his business. Said Yanya lives a lot better than where he's been, and that daytime TV is crap."

  "She leaves the TV on for him? There wasn't one in her room. Or has he figured out how to get corporeal enough to touch things physically?"

  "Whoever he was haunting watched a lot of daytime TV. Yanya leans more to CSI, I think." The tingles slid up his spine and then down to his ass. "Are we staying here?"

  DB stepped away from Jesse, not wanting a woody when he went back up to see Yanya. "No, We'll come back tomorrow with some cleaning stuff. I don't want to touch anything -- there could be, like, toxic molds down here or something. Did you convince Lockhart to get off her bed at least?"

  "We debated that. He's now sitting on that chair you used, but only because I said I'd tell Yanya to go to bed naked and whack off. Apparently that's too much for Ernest Lockhart." Jesse sounded pleased by his ingenuity.

  DB shuddered. "I think even the idea of that is too much for most people." He headed up the stairs.

  "Don't forget to warn her about the mold."

  Yanya was in the shop talking to a young man with long hair and far too many earrings for DB's taste, but she at least acknowledged DB when he came in. "Ah, child." She shook some of her bangles at him and raised an eyebrow. "I trust the basement is okay?" she asked.

  "I want to come back and clean it out, do a search. Tomorrow morning work for you?"

  She sighed, long and deep. "As long as I don't need to be down there with you. I'll stay up here in the light and clear air." Since the shop was thick with incense, he assumed she was kidding about that. She looked at Jesse. "Did you take care of that issue for me?"

  The young man who she'd been talking to looked confused.

  "He's not actually on your bed," Jesse said cheerfully. "Go to bed naked and I bet he even leaves the room."

  Yanya snorted. "That draws a crowd, child. Doesn't scare them away."

  "Oh, God. Come on, Jesse, we're out of here." DB so didn't want his brain going there. At all.

  Jesse laughed and came along, and the young guy looked like he wanted to run away. Yanya smiled at him, and the look solidified more into a determination to flee. DB figured it served her right if she was going to talk that way.

  "Are you going to call Joe?" Jesse asked when they got outside.

  "Yeah, I think it's a good place to start. See what went down when Lockhart died."

  "Now?" Jesse put his hand on DB's back again. "Or is it lunch time?"

  DB glanced at his watch. It was close enough to lunch time. "Hey, you think if I arrange to meet with Joe he can expense account the lunch?"

  Jesse gave him a long look. "Do you want to eat with Joe for free or do you want to have an orgasm? There is a right answer here, so think carefully."

  DB rolled his eyes and climbed into the car. "That's a no-brainer, Jesse."

  Jesse appeared in the car next to him, grinning broadly. "So. Home or the office?"

  "Home." The way his life went, if they tried at the office, someone would show up just as he was this close to coming down Jesse's throat.

  "I suppose you'll yell at me if I get started while you drive." Jesse was eyeing him up and looking determined.

  "If you don't behave I will make you sit in the back. Again. God, Jesse. You've already got the hornball of the year award, you don't need to keep bucking for more."

  "I keep thinking that if I get you worked up enough, it'll all work and you can fuck me."

  "In the damn car?" He could just see how it would look if anyone happened to glance into the window, him there all by himself, thrusting away as if he was riding a pony.

  "Anywhere. At all. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd happily spend every lunch hour trading handjobs and sucking you off. After two decades of no sex, I have a lot of catching up to do. But actual fucking would rock." He sounded dreamy as he talked about it, his eyes glazing over and his hand drifting to his own lap.

  "Jesse." DB snapped out the name, his own cock going hard. "Stop that or I'm going to have an accident, and then there won't be any sex of any kind."

  Jesse's hand flew up and vanished through the car door for a moment. "God, you scared me." He grinned and waved his hand, wiggling his fingers. "You scared a ghost. Pretty cool. You can put that on your business card. Now, get us home in a timely manner, please."

  "Drive-through first, or I'll be starving."

  "God, you and your burgers." Jesse slumped down. "You need to eat better."

  "Well, the fancy French place up the road doesn't do take-out."

  "You need to eat vegetables and fruit."

  "You'd get pissed off if I ate some random fruit."

  "True." Jesse grinned at him. "No fruit eating 'cept for me. Hurry up with the drive-through thing so we can get to that part."

  "Horndog." He had to admit, that wasn't a complaint.

  "You keep saying that and it keeps being true." Jesse wiggled around for moment, looking pleased. "So, you're going to call Joe this afternoon? Put him to work? I bet he'll be tickled to finally have a ghost case. Or, you know. Annoyed that it's a ghost case."

  "Why would he be annoyed that it's a ghost case -- that's what he wants, right?" DB rolled down his window and placed his order before Jesse could answer.

  "He thinks he does." Jesse made faces as DB edged up to the window to wait for the bounty of burgers and fries. "But he might be disgruntled when he finds out how annoying it can be. It's not like there's a lot of ghosts trying to be helpful."

  "Yeah. And it's not like this one involves live people. Yet. Still, if there's a cold case involved here, and he gets credit for solving it, that should still be good, right?" DB handed over the cash and received his bag of greasy goodies and a cold cup of soda in return.
r />   "True. Very true. And he'll get to see you work, which will come in handy if we need him to keep you from being taken in to answer questions. I think he doesn't like me much, though. He wasn't terribly happy that I couldn't find David for him."

  "He doesn't know you, so how can he not like you? And when he thinks about it, he'll be happy that you didn't find David. That means David moved on. Which is the better of the two options."

  "I totally agree." Jesse waved a hand. "But still. It's got to be hard knowing his lover's truly gone. I get why he's having a hard time with it. Blame the messenger kind of thing, I think." Jesse nodded, apparently to himself. "He'll come around if I manage to get information to you guys when you need it. When there's information to be gotten, I mean. Your lunch smells good."